Cannonball Read 15

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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Indonesia, Etc.

Indonesia, Etc. by Elisabeth Pisani

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Declaring independence in 1945, Indonesia said it would “work out the details of the transfer of power etc. as soon as possible.” With over 300 ethnic groups spread across over 13,500 islands, the world’s fourth most populous nation has been working on that “etc.” ever since. I bought this book in a charming London bookshop shortly after learning I would be moving to Timor-Leste.  There were no books about Timor, but there was this appealing book about Indonesia, written by Elizabeth Pisani, who also wrote […]

“You’ll probably find one of those, ‘I like art’-type girls”

A Paris All Your Own by Eleanor Brown

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Of all the cities in the world to visit, none is as pressure-filled as Paris (from my vantage point, at least). I’m heading there for a weekend and it’s been a decade since I last went so I picked up this collection of essays, promising “Bestselling Women Writers on the City of Light.” I love the concept of this and I have the NYC-equivalents on my TR list (Goodbye to All That & Can’t Say Goodbye). I didn’t necessarily expect a useful travelogue but I […]

A Road Trip with a Dog

Travels with Charley: In Search of America by John Steinbeck

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I read this due to my Steinbeck kick.  I was a little worried about reading it immediately after The Grapes of Wrath but it was the perfect antidote to my melancholy mood.  This is a travel journey by one of America’s preeminent authors who decided that that he no longer felt in touch with America and her people and wanted to find her again.  Discontented seems to best describe the way he felt with his life when he set off on his journey in 1960 […]

You Expect Me to Believe Everything You Say, Well, Okay

Neither Here Nor There: Travels in Europe; Notes From a Small Island; The Lost Continent: Travels in Small Town America by Bill Bryson

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I wasn’t planning to review any of these books. I’ve read them all so many times, and they are all hopelessly outdated, especially Neither Here Nor There and The Lost Continent. These are books that I read and adored when I was younger, that helped me dream about a world outside of the small town I grew up in, and that even led to an aborted solo road trip when I was 21. Reading them after many years away brought back sweet memories, but there’s […]

A Graveyard Where Nothing Stays Buried

Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War by Tony Horwitz

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So, turns out some of those Civil War reenactors aren’t just pretending. I’ve never lived below the Mason-Dixon line, so this book is a bit of a shock. Confederates in the Attic is Tony Horwitz’s first-person account of his journey through the South, exploring Civil War battlefields, visiting memorials and museums, and taking part in reenactments with a “hard-core” group (hard-core here meaning they throw away the apple he wanted to eat because that particular kind didn’t exist in the 1860s, confiscate his sleeping roll, […]

The Wide Brown Land

In a Sunburned Country by Bill Bryson

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“This is a country that is at once staggeringly empty and yet packed with stuff. Interesting stuff, ancient stuff, stuff not readily explained. Stuff yet to be found.” Every time I read this book it reawakens in me a longing to visit Australia. I want to see literally every place Bill Bryson visits. I can’t get enough information about the animals and plants (whenever I reread it, my Google search history is full of tingle trees, potoroos, cassowaries, and box jellyfish). What is it like to ride […]



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